


darling, you're made of gold

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Child Abuse, Genderqueer Character, M/M, Multi, gratuitous amounts of ice cream oops
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-11 15:59:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7898875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grisha and Carla fight at just the wrong times. During the summer, Eren falls into deep pits of worthlessness and can be seen fingering his guitar for all of two seconds before saying he’s tired or tapping a pencil on his desk before he says he has no song ideas. Armin use to be worried, questioned whether Eren had any <i>thoughts</i> of any kind.</p><p>He does, now that his parents decide to fight. He stood at the foot of his door, listening as things were thrown and violent words were spat across the room. Of course, he’s trembling. Of course, he’s crying. Of course, he doesn’t know what to do.</p><p>Of course, he thinks it’s his fault.</p><p>He thinks it’s a good idea to open up Instagram on his phone, divert his attention elsewhere. The fight is calming down but his racing heart hasn’t stopped, trying to jump out of his ribcage. He makes his way to his direct messages and clicks the most recent conversation, from a Mr. jean_kirsch and he’s typing in, at one in the morning on a Tuesday, <b>are you awake</b> with tears sticky on his cheeks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	darling, you're made of gold

**Author's Note:**

> _Okay._ I have to give a shout out to my artist buddy in this snk mini bang challenge, [Vika](http://keyvvidoodle.tumblr.com/), because she is the best thing since sliced bread. I don't think I deserve her because she was so sweet to me and, because of that, I dedicate this immense piece of fluff to her. Her art for this is [here](http://keyvvidoodle.tumblr.com/post/149760651806/okaaay-here-we-go-v-heres-my-second-and).

Eren isn’t sure when his parents first began arguing but he distinctly remembers searching the shelves of their small family library, simply looking for a book to read, before coming across several notebooks. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to read the penwork of Frederick Douglass or Neil Gaiman or Sylvia Plath so he settled for the smallish, girlishly colored notebooks (as he saw them at the time), and flipped through the pages. He saw the undeveloped version of his mother’s current handwriting and his interest was piqued enough for him to sit on the carpeted floor, eyebrows raised and fingering each page with reverence for the earlier version of his favorite woman.

He read it swiftly. Taken back to a former life of his mother’s when she was younger and on the brink of marrying his father, he is flipping through each page, reading the words faster and faster to take it all in. He reads them with a semblance of open-heartedness, as he had never had his mother bared so broadly for him and had never considered she might have felt emotions enough to record them.

In each page blossomed her feelings of her current boyfriend, Grisha, a man who she detailed to be brooding and disagreeable at first glance but somehow sweet and wearing on her heart. He read through pages of his mother’s most mundane days that somehow had enough significance to squirm their way into a diary entry and he found himself sometimes mentioned in the form of preferred baby names, his often circled in list after list when she found out she was pregnant.

He thought their lives were wonderful and immense. Until he came across a diary entry that was dated a year in September and, by Carla’s dreary tone, she was upset.

_Grisha and I were making breakfast this morning and I didn't like the way he would half-ass cook things. Eventually, I told him to move out of my way so I could cook the eggs the proper way (they weren't being scrambled right and I don't understand how a medical student could fuck up something so simple) and he got upset with me. He decided to go mope in the other room and I honestly didn't care very much. I had more important things on my mind like the fact I have exams coming up and the wedding. It's all so frustrating._

She ended the entry there and Eren never got to see how things played out between the two though he deduced by the fact his parents are still together and the next day’s rather erotic entry ( _We fucked in the shower and were probably too loud because Mr. Thomas’ dog next door started barking on the other side of the wall_ ) that everything was just peachy.

Despite even this major bit of documented evidence, Eren doesn’t remember a lot of arguments popping up when he was smaller. His parents seemed to have a perfect relationship where they relied on one another to never push the other’s buttons or take things too the extreme. He saw a few which would end in stilted silences that could only be broken if someone apologized or decided to blow up further but, all in all, the arguments were silly and resolved in the end.

It wasn’t until Eren entered junior high that he noticed that they began to dispute regularly. They weren’t developed arguments and the two had a hard time figuring out how to solve them to the point that they would stop on their own. The frequency, however, frightened Eren.

With Grisha at work abroad in medicine and Carla busy raising a child and managing her own boutique, it was the separation that scared Eren. They say distance makes the heart grow fonder but scientific articles also said a child could be an impediment in a relationship especially when the child was him.

The first dispute he can recall that centered around him was when he was returning home from a soccer match, sitting in the back of his father’s black sedan. He was cradling a blue ball in his hand and softly knocking his cleats together as his father discussed his team’s loss. Another loss in the scoreboard Grisha seemed to keep in his mind where he evaluated whether his daughter was trying her hardest or bullshitting it.

Grisha wasn’t a bullshitter. He was raised during tough times and ached to be somebody, as he refreshingly tells the story over and over again. He always told Eren that his childhood home was a highway now to prove he came from nothing and lazy half ass-ers were the useless in this world. Grisha wouldn't be buried under a highway if he was a half ass-er, he said.

Eren knew this speech, dreaded it every time he got into the car after a soccer match whether he'd won or lost, whether he put in zero efforts or one hundred percent, trying to chase pigtailed girls down the field who contained more determination than he could ever muster.

“I’ve been on a losing team before. I understand that feeling, but that doesn’t mean you get to stand there like a dumbass in the middle of the field, okay sweetheart? If you’re going to play this sport then play the fucking sport.” Eren observed the pink and tight skin around Grisha’s knuckles as he gripped the steering wheel and Eren was struck with a rising fear deep in every crevice of his body. Those knuckles could do something to him and they have before. “I don’t pay enough money to see my daughter not care.”

“Okay,” he numbly gave Grisha, feeling half provoked by the _daughters_ and _sweethearts_ in Grisha’s speech and feeling buried in a submissive role he had to continue to play. He found it better to swallow the lump in his throat which enabled him to stanch tears and think of anything else but _this_. He hated _this_. When Grisha came home and he had to learn how to not cry again in order to not earn a punch in the middle of his chest (he wondered if this fear is the reason why he always felt breathless when he sensed the gentle tears flooding his eyes. When you’re punched in your chest with force enough to sway a ferry boat and you’ve never been told tears are good for you, wouldn’t you feel breathless every day of your goddamn life too?) He wiped around his eyes and it didn’t help hide any emotion in him. If anything, it made his eyes heavier and wetter like an overflowing dam.

Carla, who was looking down at her phone this whole time (which, in Eren’s mind, read as Carla giving in to Grisha’s antics, agreeing with her silence that Eren deserved this), sat up straighter in her passenger seat and said, “I think it’s best we don’t talk to her like that.”

The skin around Grisha’s knuckles pulled from pink to flushed white and so did the color of Eren’s cheeks, bring a cold sweat to his body. “How am I talking to her?”

Carla didn’t answer but she didn’t need to when she looked down at her phone with a vexed expression. Grisha curled his mouth into an ugly frown.

“Whatever.”

Grisha left that night on a plane to go to a less developed country and help the sick that passed through the foundation he worked with. Eren, perceiving a tummy-tossing sensation similar to the one his father describes patients having as a result of diarrhea, asked his father what’s wrong with him right before he boarded his flight.

His father turned to him, a briefcase in one hand and a ticket in the other and dressed in the same clothes from the earlier soccer match, said as grimly as the unwanted truth can be spoken, “You’re experiencing butterflies. Either from nervous sadness or nervous happiness. I think I will opt for the latter.”

Grisha did not give Eren the warm kiss on the forehead he was use to getting when his father left the country. This one was cold across his skin and caused him to shiver when Grisha first touched him.

Grisha did not return home for a long time and Eren dwelled on the matter for even longer. He was presumably able to email his father but, when he did, it was followed by the chasm between them growing deeper. 

It was growing into something even Grisha couldn't manage to cure.

#  **✿❀✿**

With his father gone, Eren became volatile. Carla guided him through the weary stages of body development and he anxiously awaited the coming of womanhood that would appear heavily in the swells of his breast and the redness between his legs. He would, some days, touch the vagina he didn’t know was there and told himself that it wasn’t real.

With a new body came the hatred. He read in each and every body book his mother gave him that wanting to be someone else was unhealthy. “If you feel like you don’t like being a girl, you need to talk to someone,” one book read and he felt bad for wishing he could set the book on fire.

But eventually, he learned himself through the guiding hand of Carla.

“I don’t like it when you expect things of me,” he shared while they went on an underwear shopping trip. Though he had gotten rid of his disgust for pink and pretty things and starting doing up his nails and every “girly” thing his father had pushed on him since his inception, he was uncomfortable with putting on clothes.

“What do you mean, dear?”

He was a little over eleven-years-old and words didn’t come as easy as tears did, so right in the middle of the department store in the midst of bras and thongs, he started tearing up. “I don’t want you to call me your daughter or son or anything. It makes me feel,” he searched for a word, “ _icky_.” He didn’t make eye contact for fear his mother, the only constant kindness in his invariably weird and alarming adolescence life, would screw her face up in the way he disliked the most and tell him he wasn’t allowed to feel that way.

“I’m cool with that,” she sounded like she was on the verge of laughing a little. He looked up at her and he saw the sparkling love in her eyes. “I strive to make my child comfortable. Did you think I was going to say that was weird or something?” She actually did laugh this time and grabbed his chin while she was at it, touching his cheek, “I’m not trying to be some mean parent. I want you to explore yourself and find out what you are and who you are and all that wonderfulness. If I’m doing something wrong to the point that you cry when you open up to me, you let me know and I will work on it.” 

Never did he think he could love his mother more.

There began a journey where Eren was sometimes a he and other times a she or they or anything, really.

He felt free to live.

#  **✿❀✿**

The first real fight about him came slowly after he told his mother everything.

Grisha returned home from god knows where, tired and seemingly happy to see his child and wife waiting for him at the airport with a sign they made that said in mismatching letters and markers WE MISSED YOU DOC. He laughed when he greeted them joyously. He told them he loved them and missed them so much and asked if anything exciting happened while he was gone, seeing as he didn’t get very many messages or calls from the area he was stationed (Eren didn’t want to tell him he wasn’t going to get any from him when Grisha hooked up to the server at home and checked his Hotmail like a mailbox). They looked like a family after months of hard separation.

They piled themselves into the car. Though Eren gave the formalities and answered every question posed, he apparently hadn’t talked enough for his father to be satisfied and he decided to question Eren. “Did you miss me?”

The answer itself was hard. He had been told his face was readable from a mile away. Every emotion was played out on Eren’s face and he could feel it but never learned how to control the twisting and the turning or the scowls nor the squints.

So when he said yes directly to his father’s face, he learned where he inherited that easily-readable face from as his father looked ready to stop the vehicle and choke him on the side of the road.

He could imagine the feeling of being lied to by someone you expected to only give you a truthful, sweet answer. The anger. The frustration. And, most of all, the sadness.

But even he couldn’t find it in himself to care what Grisha thought.

His parents probably discussed it, he thought, when he was called to their bedroom and Grisha told him to sit down on the bed with them in typical disciplinary fashion. While Eren definitely felt apprehensive about getting any closer than was required to Grisha, Carla relaxed him with a smile on her lips and the familiar maternal concern painted on her face.

He settled in between them, hoping Carla would protect him should things go south and it wasn’t that he expected it to take a nasty direction. He was only thinking of the what if’s and the what if’s were major possibilities he had to consider.

“Do you know why I called you in here?” Grisha started out, gritting his teeth. The answer was a yes but Eren didn’t want to assume anything for fear he was wrong and Grisha started _two_ discussions with him rather than just one. He found out early as a child that assumptions will kill you, figuratively speaking. If you were guilty, never admit until they accused. “I called you in here because you don’t appear happy to see me and I’m concerned as to why you wouldn’t be.”

The pause in Grisha’s voice caused Eren to nearly die from nervousness because that could only mean Grisha was awaiting a response Eren didn’t have. So he settled for a shrug (and at the moment, he knew this was going to end worse than it originally was. A shrug in the eyes of a powerful man like Grisha who worked with time sensitive issues and took only yes’s or no’s was the epitome of utter indecisiveness) followed by, “I don’t know.” He cringed at everything he had done wrong.

“Let me tell you something.” Grisha licked his lips in the way he did every time he was about to tell a true story. “You know why my mother and I don’t have a great relationship? It stems from miscommunication and lack of trust. She went and did terrible things while I was entrusted to myself and had to take care of myself. She left me, a little boy, to do things all alone and because of this, I do not trust her. I distanced myself from her because if I were near her, I’m sure I would either punch her in her face if she ever talked to me or say something disrespectful that would get me punched in the face. Either way, we never talked about our thirty-year-old problems that have continued to fester and fester.

“I don’t know what kind of relationship you want with me, Eren, but you need to figure it the fuck out and soon. I honestly wouldn’t sit here and watch ignore me and develop just as bad a relationship your grandmother and I have.”

Eren swallowed the lump; he swallowed the tears; his hands fidgeted in his lap. “Okay.” He stared ahead at the wall because he knew better than to look at his father. He knew what was coming next and his heart was beating a thousand beats for per second.

“So,” his father led into, “why aren’t you more happy to see me? It kind of hurts my feelings when my child doesn’t email me or call me or even bother to tell me they missed me while I was gone for so long.” Humor was played bitterly into Grisha’s words but the tone remains forcibly tight. Eren flinched.

Unfortunately for his father, Eren didn’t have much of an answer he wanted to give. “I don’t know,” he settled for once again one evening (the one phrase his father despised above all else).

“Okay, then.” Eren picked up on the increased strain in Grisha’s voice. He was trying to remain calm and keep things lighthearted even when things weren’t going his way. “Well, tell me this. Why didn’t you email me?”

“I don’t know.”

“I kind of think you do know.” Grisha tapped his finger against his laid out thigh. “I know for a fact your mother told you repeatedly to send me an email from time to time because, in the emails I did get, she told me I should be getting some from you. But. Nothing. And I checked my email earlier and nothing. I got the emails from your _mother_ and all the voicemails from your _mother_ but nothing,” his voice was hysterical, “ _absolutely nothing from you_.”

Gulping air and wondering where all the possible false answers could have gone, Eren shrugged and began closing his eyes, awaiting the impact of a fist against his skin because he couldn’t find the words.

Sure enough, one came to his chest and while he couldn’t react fast enough to not gasp into the pain and hold onto the place just above the round swells of his breasts, Carla was already shouting and wrapping an arm around Eren’s shoulder. He huddled into her side and allowed the tears well up even if he was sitting in the same room as his father who he knows was speaking to him.

His hearing wasn’t picking up anything but he hypothesized it was something along the lines of _Don’t cry like such a punk. Your tears don’t do anything._

He was trying to embrace the pain, however. Years and years of this built him up into a fragile brick wall that took the force rather patiently and craved the feeling of digging his own heel in the wounds just to feel it again, the rush. Right then, he was breathing evenly to feel the pooling ache in his lungs. It pierced him each time he breathed.

Carla was loaded with ammunition and fired round after round of arguments at Grisha while Eren unhurriedly collected himself. “ _why._ Why, Grisha? Why did you feel the need to do that?”

“I punched my daughter-” Grisha appeared almost shocked.

“Shut up! Just shut up. You don’t have any justifiable reasons.” She turned back to Eren who had stopped sobbing and opted to merely hide his face in his mother’s embrace like he could stay right there. “Why don’t you go to sleep?”

He left to the sound of his parents aggressively overlapping each other’s sentences. Voices drifted through the house for along enough time that Eren fell asleep with it’s near ambient murmur.

When he woke up in the morning, Grisha was up early making breakfast. Cinnamon rolls and boiled eggs along with grits (made the way Eren liked it) were waiting at the table. His father offered it as a sign of apology, noting with words that he was sorry and didn’t mean to lay a hand on Eren.

Eren took the apology and spent the day awkwardly trying to reconnect with his father by watching animated movies and listening to Eren play the guitar with as little experience as was possible for someone who practiced every single day.

#  **✿❀✿**

They don’t talk about him for awhile. His father and him co-exist nicely for the next few years Eren transforms into a better, more well informed person in middle school. Despite some harassment and the tough ups and downs of early teenage self-discovery, he makes it out unscathed and can even call some of those days the best.

In those halls was where he learned he liked the look and feel of lip gloss on his lips and the feel of silky boxer shorts and being called a young woman then playing on the boys’ soccer team. He doesn’t feel at all sorry for his fluidity and the days he confuses his teachers when he says he’s feeling a tad more boy than girl, a tad more nothing than something, a tad whatever. He settled in middle school that it didn’t matter.

People on his first day of high school asked him what he identified as and he had fired back his favorite phrase from then on, “What do you think I am?” and, by the end of the day, all his classmates called him a mixing pot of pronouns that he felt so overwhelming cherished by this openness, that he broke down crying to his mother.

His mother uses the pronouns he/him to refer to him and those are his defaults. Someone had asked him one at one instant in his life and he had replied, “Gender expression and identity is about what feels comfortable for you as a person. I let my friends decide what they think my identity is because it’s all very arbitrary how people feel about me, what vibes they get, and I could care less. The identity was about trying to stray away from people’s expectations of me and now it’s become a sort of guessing game I like. I like it. It’s like a teddy bear I come back to at any instant of the day so when my mother told me she thinks and refers to me in terms of he and him, I thought, the most reassuring person in my life has told me how they see me. This is the peak of solace and I wouldn’t change it for a minute.”

#  **✿❀✿**

He talked to his father about misgendering him for the first time and he thinks it’s an honest to god mistake when he hears the fight occurring outside his room. He tries to pretend he doesn’t catch keywords like _transgender_ and _gay_ and altogether avoids touching the venomous-filled words his father picks to supposedly describe Eren.

Of course, he settles that, yes, it was most definitely worth whatever hell fire and brimstone the two want to raise because Eren has been through enough of a _shit_ journey through excruciating self-hate to reach the happy parts of his epiphanies. He doesn’t trade it for the world. And, he mutters to himself, maybe his father should not have misgendered him _or_ gotten upset about it.

He stares at his ceiling and it seems that today is one of those days where his parents are so fed up with an easy conversation that they resort to simply screaming at each other. He can feel the echoes bouncing through the house and he thinks he could feel better with their screaming if they eased off the topic of his gender for a bit.

Carla’s voice sinks to the top, her yelling outmatching Grisha’s in an effort to call him a ridiculous man, for being insensitive and a “total dickwad.” She sounds near hoarse. Words come rushing heavy off her breath and Eren might have to step in, say something along the lines of “Not everyone understands this stuff at first glance, mom,” but he doesn’t know how much that would help considering Grisha’s known about this just as long as Carla has. Besides, he’s tired and he doesn’t know what help it would be to walk downstairs in a rumpled dress from yesterday, not having brushed his teeth either nor washing his face. One of them would tell him this wasn’t his fight and he’d be forced to sulk up to his room with their argument playing in the background.

He listens to Carla tell Grisha to shut up and listen, a command he knows only serves to draw them nearer to threats and edging to physical violence and it is again that he contemplates intercepting this whole thing. He can imagine the clench in Grisha’s jaw, the way his hand awkwardly holds something like he’s going to crush it in his bare grip.

Instead, Eren handles his phone off his nightstand and finds something to do while laying in bed rather than pacing. While he can’t find the courage to walk through their fight and bring it to an end, he has sense enough to know he needs to listen for the sound of skin against skin in case things get too silent too quick. Though it has never happened, he lives in a paranoia completely wrapped the concept that a man who would lay a hand on a child would lay a hand on another adult without remorse.

When they touch sometimes, even when it is meant to be sensual or loving, they have a way of coming off too aggressive. Grisha always pulls and Carla is always pushing and though he knows that they have coexisted like this peacefully for years before he was even born, it puts him on edge when he sees Carla's hesitant smile when Grisha holds her waist. He feels a lump grow in his chest when Carla says something teasing and Grisha's face blooms into a frown.

He blames it on a heightened paranoia.

He hears them talking, Grisha asking that Carla think reasonably and Carla telling him to not speak until she is done. Eren, of course, is playing his game harder (if that's even possible). Tapping harder with his nail till he fears he is causing damage to his cuticles. The petty concern brings a distraction from the tears he's trying to keep at bay as he listens to both of them raise their voices an octave. They try to speak over one another but it ends up with them dueting a terribly noisy and incomprehensible conversation.

There is a point when they begin to call each other names and even Eren can't take it. He knows they are long overdue for an argument they've been dancing around for at least a week. He didn't understand the signs at first but the contained rage after his decision to wear a skirt outside the house and the horribly convoluted discussion about identity and expression with his father was surely a big enough signal.

He texts Levi, in a moment of weakness he knows he shouldn't display, **i'm so fed up**. It sounds rather desperate and he cringes at the many implications Levi could make.

But he makes the right one, gladly (sadly). **What did your parents do this time?**

 **dad cant decide whether im faking this whole gender thing? i dont get the whole thing but its upsetting and im so frustrated and angry and i want to cry bc if he had a problem or question about me, why wouldnt he just clearly and kindly come to me??** Eren angrily types it. He knows he should take a deep breath, he knows he should calm down, he knows he should put the phone down and go to sleep because it's one in the morning and it's no time to be up, worrying about what his parents could and probably will do as a result of him and his life decisions. But, instead, he's ranting and crying into his phone. He's not sure which scenario he'd like better in the end.

Levi takes a long time to respond so he begins to regret it all, the rushed texting, the paragraph long complaint and the fact that he's always running to his friend with his problems. **im sorry to bother you with this. i always am. just forget about it.** He makes the split second decision to apologize and even this feels stupid, needy.

Immediately, Levi is responding with a text obviously meant for the previous one. **Firstly, I want you to take a deep breath and tell me how you feel. You're all right, yes? I know how you get when you're really frustrated.**

Levi rapidly follows that one up with, **Never feel like you're bothering me. EVER. You trust me with this emotional turmoil and I'm flattered and don't want you to be upset. It's a different story if you don't want to talk to me, that is.**

A wave of relief washes over Eren. **youre such a great friend. idk what i did to deserve you. of course i want to talk to you. i don't have anyone else to talk to.**

 **Not true** , Levi replies. **You could always go to Armin or Mikasa.**

Truth be told, Eren didn't ever want Armin and Mikasa to know about his parents' fights. He's talked about them before but when they are on the verge of throwing punches and contemplating divorce, he is embarrassed to think that he is being raised by two people who are teaching him how to hate rather than to soothe and to conversate.

It’s backwards thinking, he’s always thought. He’s talked to guidance counselors and a few off duty therapists and online professionals and they all say he should find someone willing and capable of listening, even if they don’t give him advice. Of course, this _does_ give him free rein to pick who he wants and, even though Levi is the best option he has, he feels steadily guiltier when things get worse with either his mood or his parents and Levi sounds helplessly paralyzed, searching for things to say and ways to fix Eren.

Regardless, Eren admires his noble efforts.

**just you.**

Right when he sends this message, he hears a crash where his parents are located and he releases a sob that he didn't know was collecting his throat. He's typing before he knows what he's doing: **i just really hate them and their stupid arguing. i hate it so much, levi. i want them to stop.** He hears name-calling and more thing being thrown. **i want them to stop. i dont want to grow up and be like them.**

 **You wouldn't,** Levi says. **I promise you wouldn't.**

Levi precedes to call him when he doesn't respond to his text. Eren had shrouded himself in a blanket when he answers.

Levi sounds apprehensive when he searches the silence. "Sweetheart?" He doesn't allow his heart to skip a beat because, in a state of panic over his parents, he finds it selfish to feel loved by someone he himself adore. Instead, he lets himself sob into the phone receiver. "Please don't cry."

He hiccups, "I can't help it."

Levi is quick to make accommodations. "It's all right to cry. Please do," but with this request, Eren can hear the _I guess_ implied in Levi's tone as he continues to cry on the phone to his best friend at one o'clock in the morning. While Levi can be nurturing and pacifying, he knows he doesn't necessarily know what to do when Eren calls him solely for the purpose of producing waterworks or when he asks Levi to cradle him close to his chest and pet his hair while Eren makes a stain on his shirt.

He tries not to apologize for crying but being sorry was _ingrained_ in him from day one.

"Do you want to talk about what happened?"

Eren sniffles, "He keeps misgendering me and it's getting annoying and I hate him. I just hate him so much." The words form into sobs. "I explicitly told him why things were the way they were and he doesn't bother to care. He goes to my mother to complain about how I'm such a teenager and how I'm so annoying for trying to make myself comfortable with _myself_ and I'm honest to god so tired of him. Of this." He gasps in air, feels the words coming and knowing he shouldn't say them. But he says them anyway: "I wish she'd divorce him already."

A load is lifted off his shoulders when he announces it. He does want them to divorce. He does want to leave this house. He does want to be as far away from his father as possible. He does. He _really_ does.

But it breaks his heart to think he'd want to cause someone so much unhappiness.

His tears grow fat and, in a moment of weakness, the stifled sobs he tried to keep in his throat resurface into an ugly cry.

"None of us deserve each other. I wish this would all just stop."

He has finally expelled all his thoughts and feelings out of his mouth and he is left huffing and crying, snot in his nose but he doesn't want to wipe it on his sleeve. So he touches it with the tip of his nail, hoping he is imagining it and he is. He allows himself to laugh on the phone.

"Why are you laughing?" Levi says patiently and solidly.

He laughs again. However, it meddles into a deep breath in the back of his esophagus that develops into a muffled, wet wheeze. Hyperventilating is hardly the way to keep his friendship with Levi intact (though he doubts Levi would willingly leave him during a vulnerable time in his life or ever, for that matter) so through each breath, he finds the power to say "I'm sorry" over and over and over again until he can't say it enough.

"Don't say sorry. Please don't."

"I wouldn't. I wouldn't."

After a long pause, Levi hums decidedly, "I'm coming over to your house," and hangs up before Eren can get a word in.

The wait is not long. Eren spends the time laying in his bed and watching the little world outside his window pass by.

He only sits up upon hearing a tap on the glass to which he slides the window up and allows Levi to not so gracefully climb into his bedroom.

When they straighten up, Eren having closed the window with as much strength as he can muster but as quietly as can possibly be managed (which is hard considering the two things are opposing forces in this situation and he winces as it clicks but reminds himself that no one outside his room could hear it) and Levi taking off his shoes because he'd rather not hear Eren give him shit for how he's ruining the carpet, they stare at one another for a second. Eren's cheeks color before either can speak. "Why did you come over?" he whispers. The speaking allows him to feel the crusty remains of his tears and he, feeling embarrassed, turns to find a tissue and scrub it away.

"Did you not want me to? I can go back home." Levi smells a lot like sweat and wet asphalt like he was in a big hurry and didn't bother to walk to Eren's house on the sidewalk but instead ran down the middle of the road. It is comforting.

Comforts like this only come once in awhile, Eren has learned, so he takes what he can even if it’s selfish. Even if he doesn’t think he deserves it. "I don't want you to go. Please."

Levi nods. "Of course." His voice is low-pitched and rough from apparently running all the way to Eren's house.

They end up on the bed, the lights turned off because Eren doesn't want Levi to see him cry. Which he doesn't do. He thinks he's all cried out now that Levi is spooning him, having carefully circled his arms around Eren's middle like he's afraid to upset an equilibrium if his hand accidentally intercepts a breast or skims the front of Eren's thigh.

Even though he's wallowing pitifully about his parents, he can't say that he wouldn't mind. _I wouldn't_ , he hums in his head. _I wouldn't_. He repeats. Over and over again until he's breathing steady.

When he wakes up, Levi is still at his back. His face is buried in Eren's nape and his hands are where he left them, firm on his stomach. They are touching his bare skin and it makes him ache unbearably.

"Levi." Levi stirs in his sleep and mumbles a greeting in response. "Levi, do you think I was overreacting yesterday?" He puts his hands over Levi's and they stay real still together, deciding on matters that were too easy to decide yesterday and are too hard to comprehend today.

Levi leans so that his face is pressing against Eren's neck and he says, "No." Simple as that. "You scared me but you weren't overreacting. A little crying is something you're allowed to do, you do know, right?"

In all honesty, he's never been told he could cry. He feels like a burden each and every time.

Levi sits up on his arm, moves Eren's hair out the way slowly like he is a little girl again and Levi is afraid to wake him up. He kisses Eren's cheek like he always does. Like Eren supposes he always will. And it is sweet and trustworthy. Loving.

"You are allowed to cry. I will never blame you for crying." He settles himself behind Eren again and kisses his nape and Eren shivers under the attention, in fact burying his face into the pillow.

"Thank you," he says but the pillow muffles the sound.

Levi hums.

They stay still for a long time. The bed is cozy where they lay because of the interplay of body heat exchanged between them and Eren hopes it never ends.

"I have to go."

"It's only seven," he mutters, disheartened.

"I'd hate for you to get in trouble and me be banned from the house, twerp." Levi pets Eren's hair back soothingly. "I'll be back if you want me to hang out or something."

Eren nods, half asleep. "I want ice cream and I wanna go to the park," he says on a yawn.

"I can be back in an hour."

"Deal."

An hour gives Eren a lot of time to do quite a bit. He decides that even though he isn't in the happiest of circumstances (One: Levi just left him to his own devices and he spent a good five minutes watching Levi's back as he, yup, ran away down the middle of the road and, two: his parents were temporarily separated, seeing as Grisha's car was not parked in the front of the house), he should at least make a better effort to make himself presentable. He's sure that if he dolls himself up, he'll feel some kind of spark of relaxation.

Eren makes it his mission to have a better day than he originally thought he was going to have, arguments and feelings of being overindulging be damned.

#  **✿❀✿**

His parents resolve the fight a few days later. His mother comes up to his room, smiling in the guise of an apologize from Grisha. Eren doesn’t know how he feels to be given his metaphorical cinnamon roll, eggs and grits from Grisha so offhandedly, like these apologizes no longer matter. But he waves away, says it’s no one’s fault and it’s all fine and dandy.

#  **✿❀✿**

He wakes up with the sun a few weeks later, the curtains in his room not pulled to block out the blazing sun. He’s groggy and upset to know he’s been woken up so rudely by mother nature but he is suddenly bouncing out of bed at the sound of a car revving in the driveway. He knows better than to expect his father and, instead, finds his mother departing the house when he lifts the blinds with the tip of his finger. She is dressed in a way that spells out to him she is seeking asylum with a cousin visiting from town, looking cozy but official in a tee and work jeans.

He's met the cousin before and happened to call her Auntie Nida and loved the stories she told him about far away places and working with big hot shots. He didn't love, however, the constant conversations behind his back about his mental well being and the state of, well, "the gender issue," as they called it.

It was nothing near an issue but, to them, to not decide is to be nothing but a teenager. To be confused.

He wishes, in his heart, that Carla has a nice time with Auntie Nida and relishes the feeling of having a house to himself for the first time since Grisha left.

He went away on a trip, they found out, a day after Grisha had apparently boarded a sudden flight. Coworkers told Carla that is was an emergency and nothing could be done about it, trying to pacify who they thought was a distraught wife after finding out her husband was missing when, in all actuality, she was more surprised to see a bill arriving in the mail with Grisha's name on it for a hefty price than hear about the departure.

Him and his mother did not talk about it except for a trip up in Eren’s speech when he said, “I hope he has fun,” and Carla blankly looked at him as if he had grown a second head.

He hadn't phoned or texted or emailed and the days stuff each other fuller and fuller than the last with stifling tension between distant husband and wife, mother and son, and son and father. Each plays with one another's strings and none of them don't know when to stop.

Levi, after the night he secretly stayed over, has been around to visit every day under the watchful eye of Carla and even he falls into this strange triangular tug-of-war. Carla looks at him with a face that harbors closely to distrust and even though Eren and Levi keep their friendship at just that, a friendship, they both slip up in ways they never before viewed as such.

Little things tick his mother off, causing her to ask Eren is there's anything going on with him and Levi which is ensued by a type of argument in which Eren has to deny deny _deny_ and Carla prods.

“Do you like him?” She’ll ask when she witnesses the two of them sitting on the couch, watching a movie. Levi will blush and Eren will turn sternly to her, furrowed eyebrows and a frown.

He decides most times to ignore her questions but there was one time when Levi answered honestly, “I don’t know, ma’am. That depends on how he feels about me.”

That shut everyone up real quick and Carla wouldn’t stop (annoyingly) referring to it for days after the incident. Eren didn’t bother to touch it with a twenty foot pole no matter what he might feel.

That is why he greets this moment of aloneness by grabbing his phone and calling Levi. The phone rings once before Levi is picking it up with a gruff greeting, sounding scruffy and ragged.

"Hi! Come over immediately."

Levi laughs. This type of proposal is nothing but endearing and Eren knows he's being cute, biting his lip like he's in some kind of movie. He wishes he had those long corded phones so he could wrap the tip of his nail around it and lean against a door, thinking of the boy on the other end. Of course, he does everything else except get tangled in a cord.

"I'll be right over," Levi says, quelling his laugh. "Only if you promise to wear those new shorts you got the other day and tell me about that Jean guy from the ice cream shop."

"Deal!"

As Eren dresses himself, fitting a bra around his chest (as a result, smelling like lotion from the other day which is, arguably the _best_ known feeling in Eren's world) and adjusting the shorts around his waist, he is feels bothered to think about what Levi will say. Whether the first thing that comes out of his mouth is the usual _you look cute_ or the _you look gorgeous_ reiteration. Both are favorites of his, something he looks forward to when they wake up next to each other after sleepovers and Levi says, while covering his bad breath, _you looks like the sun_.

"A pretty sun?"

"A _really_ pretty sun."

And that's how they end up hugging in the morning, usually, trying to find the pieces of each other they lost while deep asleep, Eren supposes. Eren will tuck his nose into Levi's hair and breath all deep and sometimes tear up.

He always wipes his eyes before Levi can see.

He suspects that Levi always sees.

When his clothes are fitted on him just right, he paces back and forth in his living room, awaiting this boy in a red truck.

"Eren, open up." Eren rolls his eyes, trying to decipher Levi's fetish with not using the doorbell. He opens the door and is welcomed with warm cookies in a tin. "Kuchel made them for you. I told her about your surprise period and she said haywire emotions will do that to you."

Eren's eyes grow wide. "You tell your mom about my irregular periods?"

"Yeah?" Levi walks through the threshold, taking off his heavy cardigan and placing it on the coat rack. He toes off his shoes and closes the door. "She asked how you were doing and I figured that meant give her the full update." He's biting his lip while he takes his shoes off and Eren can't help but smile because it's so cute.

Levi turns around to face Eren and he moves his hair out of the way to supposedly get a good long look at Eren. "Is it all right if I compliment you today?" Levi's eyebrows crinkle, taking in the clothes and a fresh coat of nail polish. The ends of his lips precariously flourishes into a near smile as if he wants to but is trying hard to school his looks.

"If I said no, wouldn't you find a roundabout way of doing it anyway?"

Levi does smile fully and confidently this time. "Aren't you the same person who told me you don't like it when people give you unsolicited compliments?"

"Maybe." The color on Eren's nails is interesting, to say the least, and he avoids Levi's gaze for the simple fact that pale green is definitely his color.

"I figured that applied to everyone."

"Levi, just give me a stupid compliment already," he gives in.

"Okay." Levi puts a hand on his cheek, poised like he's directing a photoshoot. "Spin around a little so I get the whole three-hundred-sixty degrees, please."

Eren's cheeks are tinted a pinkish hue but he does it anyway, slowly because it's embarrassing and his feet don't work. Levi hums appreciatively. "I like that polka-dot pattern on your legs. And red and white look good on you. I'm glad I made you buy these." Levi's hand is on the short's end, his fingers touching the skin of his sensitive thigh. Eren tries not to jolt but it's hard and he walks away to the kitchen with Levi in tow, looking vaguely bashful.

Levi sits down at the kitchen counter and Eren goes around setting the cookie tin down and getting a bowl of ice cream for himself and his friend.

"So," Levi starts to which Eren looks up at him, his mouth stuffed with a cookie. Levi smiles but straightens his face out to continue his sentence. "Tell me about that Jean fucker."

Eren swallows the cookie. "Don't be rude. He's trying his best."

"Whatever. I kind of don't like him."

"You don't have to like him."

For all the years Levi and Eren have known each other, this is the first time Levi has ever disliked an associate of Eren's.

The meeting was innocuous enough. Levi drove with Eren to the local ice cream shop and while Levi stopped by next door, the boy behind the counter chatted him up. Not that Eren minded. He looked the way he always wanted to: in the right dress, with the right shoes and the pretty bows in his hair and, though the "unsolicited compliments" were, well, unsolicited and off-putting, Eren could read the intent and friendliness in Jean's words. The best part was when Eren told him to stop saying nice things and Jean listened.

Eren had been weird in his own way, walking into the shop, jolly and spectacularly happy to be away from home. Levi had turned to Eren before opening the parlor door and said, "Are you sure about this?" maybe reading some secret weariness in Eren's actions or expression that even he couldn't find.

"Of course. I want ice cream. Give me ice cream."

He'd waltzed into the place with Levi acting like the perfect gentleman beside him and stared at Eren the way he wanted to be stared at. Eren introduced himself to the "ice cream man", as he called him that day, changing it between the sudden nickname and his real name, Jean, that he observed from the nametag. "I've seen you around my neighborhood, I think," Eren said while smiling, using his nail to scrape off some stray ice cream on his bottom lip. "You live down Pineberry Drive, yeah?"

The flustered ice cream man gave a stiff response full of repetitive and exhausted _yeah_ , _yeahs_ and hums. It disarmed Eren to the point that he simply nodded prettily and considered only talking to Levi for the duration of their time there.

But when Levi was left, all that was left was Jean and Eren who was happy and had a mouth full of ice cream while in talkative spirits. Eren couldn’t help but get acquainted with the attractive stranger.

He dipped his spoon into his mint chocolate chip waffle cone and asked where Jean went to school and whether he'd seen the new summer blockbuster and "Oh, I'm going to be a junior this year! My friend there, the shortie, is going to be a senior. I'm going to miss him dearly when he gets accepted to some weird college. He promises he isn't going far-" he drawled on until he was reminded that he had ice cream in front of him and spooned more into his mouth. "My name is Eren by the way." He offered his hand to shake. Jean's palm was warm and firm.

"May I ask a question?"

"Of course!" Eren pepped.

"May I ask your gender?" The politeness made Eren giggle.

"Well, let me ask _you_ a question," he quirked an eyebrow. "What do you suppose it is?"

"Genderfluid, maybe? Your boyfriend called you a boy not too long ago." He trailed off when he saw that Eren was no longer listening with an enraptured tightened but friendly face.

Eren found his composure. "Firstly, Levi isn't my boyfriend. We're just friends. Don't worry your little head about our relationship," he put a finger out to tap Jean's head to which Jean somehow knew to lean into and Eren smiled at the instant flow in their body language. "Secondly, you're cute _and_ informed. I like it. To answer your question, my pronouns are whatever you want them to be."

Jean stared at him for long enough for the sticky contents of Eren's bowl to make the waffle cone soggy in some areas. It felt spongy when he touched it with his finger. While in this process, he heard his phone ring. "Hello?"

"I finished my ice cream and figured you'd be about done too so I'm in the car. I did it without thinking, honestly," Levi said over the phone, talking like Eren was going to reprimand him for going to the car without him.

"I'm not mad at you or anything," Eren scrunched up his face at the word _mad_. He could never be mad at Levi. "I'll be there in a second." He waved off Jean, saying goodbye for what he assumes was forever and left.

But that wasn't the last of him.

Apparently, Jean and Eren had the mutual friend Armin and all three were on Instagram.

Somehow, someway, @jean_kirsch has happened upon his Instagram and politely asked access to Eren's private profile. Eren couldn't say no even if it was followed up by a direct message that went something along the lines of **hey. i was wondering if you remembered me and if so you wanted to hang or smthing**. The whole thing felt insecurely typed, a horrible stab at asking a person out on a date. Eren couldn't help but feel flattered and somewhat responsible for this unwarranted request.

Eren laughed the first time he told that story to Levi over facetime but Levi looked seriously frustrated. "I don't like him," he kept saying.

"You don't like anyone, Levi."

"I like you."

Eren dropped his head on his pillow and his phone somewhere next to him on his bed. He opted to ignore that comment. "He's fun to text with. I probably shouldn't do it but he's nice."

A moment of silence lapsed. "Okay."

Eren popped his head up. "Okay?"

"Okay," came the sighed answer.

Eren hands Levi his bowl of ice cream and sits next to him at the marble counter, mulling over where to begin his "What's Jean Up To Now" as Levi calls it. Levi thought he was being clever when he came up with that name but deflated when Eren called him corny.

He whips out his phone.

Levi takes a bite of his ice cream and comments, "We eat a lot of this stuff. I wonder which will catch up first: our metabolisms or lactose intolerance."

"Never ever say the L phrase near me again, you oaf," he says half-muttering and wholeheartedly truthful. Eren looks up from his phone, looking under his eyelashes at Levi in a fashion that seems like a playful dare from the grin Levi gives him in return.

"So, tell me about your boy."

"Well, he really wants to meet up." The app loads and Eren clicks around to the direct messages, viewing the back and forth banter between Eren and his aforementioned “boy.”

"Do you want to meet up with him?"

Eren shrugs. "I like him. He's nice." He takes a bite of his treat.

Levi squints at him. "You always say he's nice. Anyone can be nice, dear."

For an instant, Eren is annoyed at the direction of the conversation. "That doesn't matter right now." He can't say annoyed, however, and his stomach flutters when he asks, "Did you just so happen to call me _dear_?"

Levi turns away, looking flustered and blushing under the watchful and half-amused gaze of Eren. Levi's never called him _dear_ before and he manages to not laugh and, instead, swallow and digest what this means in his heart.

In the grand scheme of things, Eren's never thought about what it could mean if Levi said these polite compliments and adorable pet names to him seriously, with a touch of infatuated devotion and desire in his eyes. He's only sixteen, in the midst of understanding his sexuality and the fluidity of his own being, that he can't help but think _it's all too quick. Too much! I'm not old enough!_

And, yet. It's what keeps him up at night. The first time Eren told Levi anything personal was in junior high. They had been riding bikes around the neighborhood and Eren drew him into the woods via a walking trail. Levi had warned him snakes and alligators could be lurking, seeing as they were right near a large pond. "We could get eaten or something."

"I have to tell you something important, though."

"Can't you tell me away from alligator infested waters?" Levi complained though not seriously. He continued to follow Eren.

"I think there is something wrong with me, Levi."

Eren can’t forget the look that crossed his face. Concern firstly in the exasperation of Levi's eyes as he sat down on a log and pat the space next to him, saying to him, "I think you're fine."

Eren ignored the gesture and paced. "Well, I _think_ there is something _wrong."_ He wiped his sweaty, sticky hands on his shorts and played with a stray string on his tee. "My dad says I don't act like a girl."

And thus began a conversation and exploration of who Eren would become, wanted to become and he felt suddenly safe when Levi stood up and wrapped his arms around Eren, the both of them smelling the mud and wetness on each other's skins. How could he _not_ fall in love with a boy who told him from day one that he was accepted?

Eren predicts the two of them would make a spectacular love story.

Levi is still avoiding his gaze and he grins toothily. "I like it. You should keep it up."

"Calling you dear?" Eren nods. Eyes open wide and sparkling gladly, Levi stutters, "I will. Okay, we'll do that now."

Jean is all but forgotten at that moment.

**Author's Note:**

> Part Two of this long, long, thing will be up in the future. Stay updated with my [tumblr](http://minichronicler.tumblr.com/). I've been told this chapter is sad so get ready for a sadder chapter :). I hope you have a lovely, blessed day.


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